The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
It is necessary to be able to carry out repairs on parts or parts of components made of composite materials, for example internal fixed structures (IFS) of nacelles for aircraft engines. These structures are indeed subject to degradation that can result in particular from overheating, from the impact of projectiles during the course of a flight or while undergoing maintenance (the falling of a tool, for example).
The repairing of composite parts, formed from fibres embedded in the polymerised resin by curing, requires an increase in temperature, generally located in the area 190° C.
Such a temperature increase makes it possible in effect to fluidify and to polymerise the resin of the composite plies used for repairing the part in question.
Typically, in order to locally raise the temperature of the part to be repaired, use is made of heating pads, that is to say electrical resistance grids embedded in silicone mats: this is, for example, included in the teaching of the earlier patent application EP 1 962 562.
These resistors are connected to an electrical current, which is regulated by means of using one or more thermocouples placed in proximity of the area to be heated.
In practice, there are two main disadvantages: on the one hand, it is very difficult to obtain a homogeneous distribution of the temperature over the entire surface to be repaired, and on the other hand, it takes a considerable amount of time to achieve stabilisation of temperatures at certain points of this surface.